Uncovering the Hidden

Elite Controllers & Hidden Agendas

Who
is George W. Bush?

BY SUSAN BRYCE

He grew up as a very
rich child with powerful parents. He partied from high school until
he was 40 then went cold turkey on drugs and alcohol. His business
career was marked by mediocrity or failure that nonetheless resulted
making him millions of dollars thanks to the political allies of his
father, who happened to be the US President. He was elected 46th
governor of Texas mostly because of his family name and his dad’s
cronies. He found God and became a Christian. Now, George W. Bush is
the 43rd president of the United States.

The Bush
administration is a combination of Cold War warriors, big business
bureaucrats and ideologues, harvested from the Ford, Nixon and
Reagan governments. As veterans of past Republican administrations
their thinking reflects a bygone era, particularly with respect to
social policy, the environment and nuclear defence. Many of Bush’s
appointees are pals from his days as Governor of Texas, or are
members of influential insider think tanks such as the Council on
Foreign Relations and the Centre for Strategic and International
Studies. This article provides a brief analysis of the key players
in the ‘Bush team’, their backgrounds, their policies and their
likely agendas over the next four years.

President George
Walker Bush

Bush’s name is a
familiar one in the ranks of America’s top leadership: George W.
Bush is the oldest son of George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st
president. The only other set of father-son presidents came early in
US history when John Quincy Adams, son of the second president, John
Adams, became the sixth president in 1825. Bush Jr. attended Eastern
elitist schools, in this case Andover Prep, and Yale. According to a
Newsweek profile, he “went to Yale but seems to have
majored in drinking at the Deke House.” He became a member of the
secretive Skull & Bones society in 1968.

George W. Bush joins
a recent parade of state governors (Carter, Reagan, and Clinton) who
have moved up to the highest office in the country. Bush was elected
Governor of Texas in 1994. He and his brother Jeb Bush (elected in
Florida in 1998) were the first brothers to be simultaneous
governors since the Rockefellers. Before becoming Governor of Texas,
George Bush was involved in the Texan oil scene, where he founded an
oil company, Arbusto Energy, Inc. (Arbusto is the Spanish word for
bush.) The company floundered in the early 1980s when oil prices
dropped. Fifty investors, who were mainly family friends, sunk
millions to help bail the company out. Nearing collapse, Arbusto was
purchased by Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation in September 1984.
Despite a poor track record, the owners made Bush Jr. the president
and gave him 13.6% of the parent company’s stock.

The Spectrum 7 oil
firm company was owned by two staunch Reagan/Bush (dad was then vice
president) supporters, who were also involved with the Texas
Rangers. After working on his father’s successful 1988
presidential campaign, Bush assembled a group of partners that
purchased the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989. He sold his
stake for $14.9 million – while Texas governor. Not bad,
considering his initial investment was $600,000 of borrowed money.
Speaking after the sale, Bush told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:
“When it is all said and done, I will have made more money than I
ever dreamed I would make.”

In 1986, the Harken
Energy Corporation bought Spectrum 7’s 180-well operation. In
1990, Harken Energy was granted a contract to drill for oil off the
coast of the Gulf state of Bahrain, shunting aside the oil giant
Amoco, even though the company had no experience in offshore
operations. Suggestions that the Bahrain government was attempting
to curry favour with the US president, George Bush Snr, were denied.

A Harken Energy
director was invited to participate in private White House briefings
on Middle East policy, and in May 1990 Harken learned that
Washington was considering an oil embargo of Iraq.

In June, Bush Jr.
conveniently sold 212,000 of his Harken shares, raking in more than
$848,500. In August, US intelligence agencies, in full propaganda
mode, reported that Iraqi troops had invaded Kuwait and the value of
Harken’s shares dropped 25%.

During the 2000
presidential election campaign, various allegations about Bush’s
past misdemeanours surfaced. They include: an alleged conviction for
drunk driving; an allegation that Bush halted investigation of a
campaign contributor’s huge funeral home company; that he pulled
strings to avoid Vietnam and got favourable treatment; and that he
used drugs, then tried to cover it up.

During his campaign,
President-elect Bush made a big point of travelling around the
country and lecturing youngsters on staying celibate, sober and drug
free. At one thank-you banquet for his campaign staff, Bush
reportedly spoke to a lady, who by a brief comment she made,
indicated she was a Christian. She was with her 16-year-old son.
Bush asked the son if he was a believer, too. When the son answered
that he didn’t think so, Bush asked “Do you mind if I tell you
how I came to know Christ as my Savior?” Bush then pulled up a
chair and witnessed to the boy for 30 minutes, even leading him in
the sinner’s prayer.

And as governor of
Texas, Bush attacked his predecessor for allowing leniency toward
first-time drug users, and pushed a no tolerance policy that sent
casual cocaine users to prison. During his campaign, he proclaimed
that drug users “need to know that drug use has consequences.”
In answer to questions about drug use, Bush says it doesn’t matter
what he did “in his youth,” because the question is “have you
grown up” and “have you learned from your mistakes.”

The 43rd president of
the US is an unwavering proponent of trade liberalisation and a
strong US military. Although he has pledged to curtail the use of US
military power for purposes short of major wars, he is forging ahead
with the US ballistic missile defence shield, following in the
hawkish footsteps of his father. Shortly after his inauguration,
George W. Bush told reporters: “We will work to defend our people
and our allies against growing threats of missiles, information
warfare, the threats of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. We
will confront the new threats of a new century… we will begin
creating the military of the future – one that takes full
advantage of revolutionary new technologies. We will promote the
peace by redefining the way wars will be fought.”

During his
presidential campaign, Bush worked to silence his critics. Not since
Richard Nixon has a major presidential candidate been so quick to
prevent the free speech of his opponents. When asked about one
critical web site, Bush told the press, “There ought to be limits
to freedom. We’re aware of this site, and this guy is just a
garbage man, that’s all he is.” His campaign reportedly bought
up over 200 anti-Bush domain names including “bushsucks.com” and
“bushbites.com” before the presidential election.

Colin Powell:
Secretary of State

After alleged
cover-ups in Vietnam and in the Iran-Contra affair, Powell has once
again managed to pull the prestige of the military rank above any
scandal to become Secretary of State. After 35 years in the US Army,
Powell took up the position of General and Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs from 1989 to 1993. As a General, he rose to superhero status
during the Gulf War. His famous quip about the Iraqi army, “We are
going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it,” impressed
some of the fact starved journalists, who later described his Gulf
War performance as “masterful.” For Powell, the armed forces are
a gleaming and expensive elite, to be maintained at vast cost but
not to be dirtied by any deployment, let alone peacekeeping. The
“Powell Doctrine” focuses upon how to fight wars and when to
fight them – with minimal casualties. Powell, a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations, is believed to be one of the
architects of the US military’s Joint Vision 2010 (previously
reported in New Dawn No. 59).

Powell has come out
of retirement to take up post as Secretary of State. During
retirement, he wrote a best-selling autobiography and launched a
career as a public speaker, addressing audiences across the United
States and overseas. During his acceptance press conference, Powell
lectured about his foreign policy priorities and made the case
forcefully for a defensive shield to become “an essential part”
of the nation’s security. Bush stood mutely along side, while
Powell offered his vision for the future.

It is said that
Powell does not advise, ‘he insists.’ His comments about Russia
demonstrate the Bush administration’s commitment to a unipolar
world: “Our relations with Russia must not be dictated by any fear
on our part. For example, if we believe the enlargement of NATO
should continue, for example, and we do believe that, we should not
fear that Russia will object. We will do it because it is in our
interest and because freedom-loving people wish to be part of NATO.
Instead, we should deal with Russia’s objections and find a way to
address them.”

Powell’s son,
Michael, has been made Chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission.

Condoleeza Rice:
President Bush’s National Security Adviser

Rice served on the
National Security Council under the previous Bush administration.
From 1989-1991, she was a director and then senior director of
Soviet and East European Affairs and was later named special
assistant to the National Security Affairs Advisor.

Rice has written or
collaborated on several books, including Germany Unified and
Europe Transformed (1995), The Gorbachev Era (1986), and Uncertain
Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984).
Upon her arrival in Washington in 1986, she worked on nuclear
strategic planning at the Joint Chiefs of Staff as part of a Council
on Foreign Relations fellowship. Rice’s membership of the Council
on Foreign Relations continues in the tradition of having a CFR
member hold the NSA top spot (in recent years Henry Kissinger, Brent
Scowcroft, and Zbigniew Brzezinski have held the post). In addition
to her CFR membership, Dr. Rice is also a member of the Aspen
Institute’s Strategy Group. She has served as a Professor and
provost at Stanford University and as a fellow of the Hoover
Institute.

Speaking about her
appointment, Rice said: “George W. Bush will never allow America
and our allies to be blackmailed. And make no mistake; blackmail is
what the outlaw states seeking long-range ballistic missiles have in
mind. It is time to move beyond the Cold War. It is time to have a
president devoted to a new nuclear strategy and to the deployment of
effective missile defenses at the earliest possible date.”

Donald Rumsfeld:
Secretary of Defense

Rumsfeld served as
Secretary of Defense in the Ford administration (26 years ago). He
recently chaired two high-profile study commissions on ballistic
missile defense and the security of space-based infrastructure. The
commissions concluded that “rogue” nations could threaten the
United States with ballistic missiles sooner than analysts had
predicted. The commission’s report is now one of the most
influential documents in modern American military planning. It led
the Clinton administration to propose its own limited version of a
national missile defense system.

Rumsfeld is former
Republican congressman, and is a former ambassador to NATO from 1973
to 1974. He completes a national security team (including the Vice
President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Powell) that shares the
dream of continuing with President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars”
program.

During the Reagan
Administration, (which cut funding to education, health, income
security and overseas aid programmes to make way for defence),
Rumsfeld served as an adviser to the US Departments of State and
Defense and as a member of the President’s General Advisory
Committee on Arms Control.

Rumsfeld served as
Chairman and chief executive officer at General Instrument
Corporation, from 1990 to 1993. He was chief executive officer,
president, and later chairman of G.D. Searle & Company, from
1977 to 1985.

Paul O’Neill:
Secretary of Treasury

Another Ford
administration veteran, O’Neill worked in the Office of Management
and Budget from 1967 to 1977, rising to deputy director. He was a
multimillionaire shareholder and CEO from 1987 to 1998 and
Chairperson of Alcoa Inc. from 1987 to 2001. Most recently, he was
chairman of the RAND Corporation, the Los Angeles-based think tank
and front for the CIA. He is also a fellow of the American
Enterprise Institute. O’Neill built his business reputation at
Alcoa by focusing on core business and engaging in ruthless cost
cutting. From 1977 to 1978, O’Neill was involved with
International Paper Company, eventually rising to president.
Although O’Neill is a long time friend of Federal Reserve head
Alan Greenspan, it is believed that he does not have sufficient
knowledge to challenge Greenspan’s judgement if necessary. Other
candidates for Secretary of Treasury were Walter V. Shipley, former
chairman of Chase Manhattan Corporation; Donald B. Marron, chairman
of the Paine Webber Group; and John M. Hennessy, former chairman of
Credit Suisse First Boston. O’Neill, an old colleague of Dick
Cheney’s, was apparently the pick of the crop.

Robert Zoellick:
United States Trade Representative

Zoellick worked on
the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement (CUFTA) at the Treasury
Department under President Reagan, and on the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) at the State Department during the previous
Bush administration. Zoellick is a past president of the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies, the influential think tank
which sets the agenda for US government policy areas such as energy,
the global information infrastructure, and trade relations.

In a gushy report
about Zoellick, Australia’s national daily newspaper, The
Australian, praised him as “an almost ludicrous
over-achiever” and the “man many believe to be the brainiest,
[and] intellectually the most formidable in the new administration
of President George W. Bush.” The Australian named Zoellick
as the likely successor to Colin Powell. Zoellick is a founding
member of the Australian-American Leadership dialogue, and last year
was granted a private audience with Prime Minister John Howard.
Zoellick’s recent article in the CFR publication Foreign
Affairs advocated a US free trade agreement linking Latin
America and the Asia Pacific region.

Donald Evans:
Secretary of Commerce

Evans has been a
life-long friend of George W. Bush and his appointment as Secretary
of Commerce is seen as reward for his involvement in Bush’s
election campaign. Evans worked for Tom Brown Inc., an independent
energy company engaged in the domestic exploration, development,
marketing and production of natural gas and crude oil, from 1975 to
2001, rising from an oil rig crew man to president, chairman and
chief executive officer.

Norman Mineta:
Secretary, Department of Transportation

Mineta was senior
vice president for transportation systems and services at Lockheed
Martin Corporation from 1995 to 2000. He was a member of the US
House of Representatives, from 1974 to 1995, and spent 20 years on
the Transportation Committee, including two years as committee
chairman. He was mayor of San Jose, California from 1971 to 1974 and
a San Jose city councilman from 1967 to 1971.

Richard B. Cheney:
Vice President of the USA

The Vice President of
the United States, known affectionately as “Dick”, is a career
businessman and public servant. He has served three Presidents. His
career in public service began in 1969 when he joined the Nixon
Administration, serving in a number of positions at the Cost of
Living Council, at the Office of Economic Opportunity, and within
the White House. When Gerald Ford assumed the Presidency in August
1974, Cheney served on the transition team and later as Deputy
Assistant to the President. In November 1975 he was named Assistant
to the President and White House Chief of Staff, a position he held
throughout the remainder of the Ford Administration.

As Secretary of
Defense from March 1989 to January 1993, Cheney directed two of the
largest military campaigns in recent history – Operation Just
Cause in Panama and Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East.

After he left the
Pentagon, Cheney became CEO of Halliburton in 1995. Halliburton is a
Texas construction and engineering company that services oil
companies and the US military.

He cashed in on his
official contacts within the government, military, the oil industry
and Middle East governments. Almost overnight, Halliburton, a
middle-sized business, swelled its coffers to $15 billion in annual
sales with contracts in 120 countries. Today Halliburton employs
100,000 people in 20 countries.

Although he flirted
with the idea of running for president in 1996, Cheney opted instead
to remain at Halliburton – where he become around $50 million
richer – until he was selected as George W. Bush’s running mate.

John Ashcroft:
Attorney General

Ashcroft is a strong
anti-abortion campaigner with a rigidly conservative and dogmatic
outlook, who has expressed opposition to the National Endowment for
the Arts. Ashcroft has earned the enmity of pro-choice women’s
groups, conservation organisations, civil libertarians and
Missouri’s black community. Ashcroft has been described as
Bush’s gift to the right wing. Ashcroft, 58, was narrowly defeated
for re-election as a Republican to the Senate in 2000. He is a
staunch proponent of the death penalty.

Tommy Thompson:
Secretary, Health and Human Services

Thompson’s views on
Medicaid, the public health insurance program for the poor and
disabled, reflect his conservative thinking. He signed legislation
that requires Wisconsin women seeking an abortion to first obtain
counselling on alternatives, then wait three days for the procedure
– if they still want it. He has been one of the main proponents of
converting Medicaid to a system of block grants to states. The idea
won Republican support in Congress in 1995 but ultimately failed,
proving so contentious that it contributed to the shutdown of the
federal government.

Thompson, who was
elected governor of Wisconsin in 1986, succeeded in slashing the
number of people in the state receiving welfare by 92%. Wisconsin
under Thompson also set the pace in diverting public education funds
to private and religious schools by way of vouchers.

Gale
Norton:
Interior Secretary

Gale Norton is a protégé
of James Watt, President Reagan’s controversial Interior secretary
from 1981 to 1983. She also served in the Reagan administration in
the Agriculture Department and then in the Interior Department where
she helped advocate for the administration’s position on oil
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. As Colorado
Attorney General, Norton was instrumental in creating the state’s
“self audit” program, which gives businesses immunity from
litigation and fines if they voluntarily report and correct
violations of environmental laws.

Spencer Abraham:
Energy Secretary

Abraham was recently
defeated as junior senator from Michigan, but during his brief
career on Capitol Hill, he managed to introduce a bill to abolish
the very department he has now been asked to run. He does not appear
to have in depth knowledge about the need for an energy efficient
economy. He fully supports Bush’s plans to open the coastal plain
of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. Abraham
served as deputy chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle from
1990 to 1992.

He was afounder of the right-wing Federalist
Society. Its goal is to politically dominate the legal profession,
especially at the level of the judiciary. It stands for eliminating
welfare, halting affirmative action and discontinuing bilingual
education. Its most prominent members are Supreme Court judges
Scalia and Clarence Thomas, whose votes were crucial in delivering
the ruling that put George Bush Jr. in the White House with a
minority of popular votes.

Ann Veneman:
Secretary, Department of Agriculture

Veneman served as
Secretary of California Department of Food and Agriculture from 1995
to 1999, rising to the position of deputy secretary. She has
extensive experience in law and trade issues, including negotiations
on the Uruguay Round that created the World Trade Organisation (WTO),
on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and on the
US-Canada Free Trade Agreement.

Elaine
Chao:
Secretary of Labor

Chao, the wife of
Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, is a former director of
the Peace Corps and from 1996 to 2001 was a fellow at the
conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. Chao was president
and chief executive officer of United Way of America from 1992-1996.
She is a former vice-president of Bank of America Capital Markets
Group.

Joe Allbaugh:
Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency

Allbaugh, 48,
previously served as chief of staff to then-Governor Bush
(1995-1999) and as campaign manager for President Bush’s first
gubernatorial campaign (1994). Before coming to Texas, he was the
deputy secretary of transport for the State of Oklahoma.

George J. Tenet,
Director, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Bush asked George
Tenet, the current director of central intelligence, “to stay on
the job for what will amount to an undetermined period of time.”
Tenet is the first CIA director in 28 years to remain in office
after the White House switched occupants.

Tenet was sworn in as
Director of Central Intelligence on July 11, 1997, following a
unanimous vote by both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
and the full Senate. In his position he heads the Intelligence
Community (all foreign intelligence agencies of the United States)
as well as directing the Central Intelligence Agency.

The First Lady Laura
Welch Bush

A teacher librarian,
her primary interest is education. When Bush was Governor of Texas,
Laura Bush launched an early childhood development programme that
was a collaborative effort with the Barbara Bush Foundation for
Family Literacy.

President George W.
Bush, the scheming businessman who used his father’s oil
connections and political position to make his fortune, now takes
charge of arguably the most important duty in the world – control
of the nuclear button (actually a switch which is flicked).
Surrounding him are advisors that harbour fundamentalist Christian
values; hawkish secretaries committed to the militarisation of
space; the captains of corporate capitalism and slick oil men. The
right wing kooks and military spooks are in control at the White
House and the Pentagon. It would make a good plot for Armageddon II.

The print version of
this article contains two side pieces, ‘Bush Appoints CFR
Members’ and ‘Another Skull & Bones President’.

__________________________________________________________
Susan Bryce is an
Australian journalist and publisher of the Australian Freedom &
Survival Guide. Her interests include global politics, the new
economy and the technologies of political control. The Australian
Freedom & Survival Guide, a newsletter that airs the dirty
laundry on the international surveillance regime, Transnational
Corporations, Genetic Engineering, the New World Order, Defence
& Military, WTO, IMF, World Bank, Globalisation. 6 issues per
year $45.00. Sample issue $7.50. Web site: http://www.squirrel.com.au/~sbryce.
Send cheque or money order payable to S. Bryce, PO Box 66,
Kenilworth, Qld 4574, Australia. Email: sbryce@squirrel.com.au

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